As wildfires blazed through Los Angeles on Wednesday, Ellen Marie Bennett shared a plea with her Instagram followers. Could someone, ideally someone with a spare trailer, help evacuate her roughly 300-pound potbellied pig?
“He is very heavy and very big so it’s not an easy task,” she wrote.
The sorun — named Oliver — was a rotund 9-year-old boar covered in coarse bristles. Ms. Bennett, the founder of the kitchenware brand Hedley & Bennett, got him as 15-pound piglet in 2016; he has enjoyed snoozing and nibbling on peaches and strawberries ever since.
When the flames approached her home in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday night, Ms. Bennett and her husband, Casey Caplowe, loaded their two young children into the car and drove them to Glendale, away from the blaze. It was going to be much more difficult to relocate their unwieldy pet, whose weight Mr. Caplowe estimated to be closer to 200 pounds.
“That was among the top priorities,” Mr. Caplowe said: “How do we get Oliver out of there?”
Tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate by wildfires that have swept through the Los Angeles area since Tuesday, claiming lives, destroying landmarks and razing residential areas. The fires have also imperiled animals, as owners flee to lodging that cannot always accommodate pets.
Animal shelters in the area are stretched thin by hundreds of dogs and cats dropped off by evacuees. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Kevin McManus, the public relations manager for Pasadena Humane, a shelter that took in more than 180 animals in less than 24 hours.
